


Spirits, Are You There?

by jugandbettsdetectiveagency



Series: halloween prompts [3]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Halloween Tumblr Prompts, I don't know how this turned out so fluffy but it did, Ouija Board, abandoned buildings, because we all know cheryl would commandeer an abandoned asylum for a party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 18:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12587820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugandbettsdetectiveagency/pseuds/jugandbettsdetectiveagency
Summary: An abandoned asylum, plus a ouija board, plus Cheryl Blossom? The perfect potion.





	Spirits, Are You There?

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompts I got this should have been some dark, supernatural stuff. That is not what happened.

“Why are we doing this again?” Betty asked with a hint of exasperation, trying not to let her nerves show.

The towering remains of the old Riverdale Asylum loomed before them, covered in decades of piled up filth and crumbling brick. Betty couldn’t help but see a day that had long since settled into the back of her mind, slightly faded around the edges but still ever-present – standing in front of The Sisters of Quiet Mercy, with its lifeless windows and imposing statues, waiting to see what had become of her sister.

But now, just like then, she could feel the warm, solid presence of Jughead Jones by her side. Except this time it’s ‘post window climbing’, and she could slip her hand into his and soak up the reassuring warmth radiating directly from his palm. 

“Because, B, when Cheryl Blossom throws a party and _deigns_ to extend you an invitation, you go,” Veronica chirped with a teasing smile planted firmly across her lips.

“She already lives in her very own Transylvanian castle, I don’t understand why she had to drag us all the way out here,” Jughead grumbled, flexing his fingers around Betty’s while he lifted a sceptical eyebrow at the dilapidated building. Veronica shot him a withering look.

“Oh, please. Like the fact that you’re currently rocking the Dick Avery look means absolutely nothing,” she quipped, shooting a pointed stare at the camera hanging from his neck. Jughead’s free hand came up to cradle the item in a motion he would retrospectively think was ridiculously protective. But, hey, he’d saved up a lot to buy it and Veronica’s eyes looked like they could whip it away from him with one quick quirk of her head, wiccan style.

“Didn’t want to waste the opportunity,” he mumbled under his breath, averting his eyes and scuffing his boot against the gravel. Betty’s fond giggle tugged at the corner of his mouth and his shoulders dropped with the soothing feeling of her open palm rubbing up and down his arm lovingly.

“My little photographer,” she cooed gently, lifting up on her toes to press a soft kiss to his warming cheek. The fact that she had called him _her_ anything was always enough to have the tips of his ears turning pink beneath his hat. He turned his head quickly, stealing an unexpected kiss that had Betty gasping in mock chastisement.

“Come on,” Veronica said a degree louder, securing the arm that Archie had slung around her more firmly across her shoulders. “We should get inside before all the good ghosts are taken.” Archie’s eyes widened.

“Babe, were you being serious? Are there really ghosts? Babe!” Jughead shook his head fondly as the sounds of his best friend’s panicked questions – that were remaining resolutely unanswered by Veronica – drifted further and further away.

“I know Veronica was only teasing but I know how you feel about parties,” Betty said, tugging him to a halt as Jughead tried to follow after their friends, her eyes wide and placating. “We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”

He couldn’t resist the opportunity to rile her up, his beautifully stubborn girlfriend. “Why, Betty, if I didn’t know any better I’d say you didn’t want to go inside this perfectly gothic asylum. Scared?” he smirked, seeing the moment the liquid concern in her green eyes solidified.

“Not at all,” she huffed, pulling him towards the entrance now. Jughead bit his lip against a laugh and let the imposing void of the darkened doorway swallow them both whole.

~

It hadn’t taken long for Jughead to want to find somewhere a bit quieter to spend some time. His friends had only been able to distract him for so long before being around a large group of people at varying levels of drunkenness began to make him antsy.

“Come on,” Betty murmured smoothly into his ear, emerging from the crowd and sliding up beside him, wrapping her hand around the crook of his elbow.

“Huh?” Jughead asked lightly, painting an innocent expression across his features and consciously making an effort to stop his foot from tapping hurriedly against the concrete floor. Betty sighed in mock exasperation, pulling him along with her as she began to walk backwards – it didn’t take much effort on her part, he went willingly.

“I’ve seen you _peering_ around practically every corner and every doorway we’ve passed tonight. I’m surprised you lasted this long; you’re itching to explore,” she teased, locking their fingers together. Jughead hurried his pace until he fell into step beside her, looking down at her profile with the softest eyes.

“You hate creepy places,” Jughead pointed out as they began to ascend a questionably stable staircase, the slats creaking in protest with each step they took.

“But I love you,” Betty replied easily without missing a beat. Jughead felt a tingling warmth spread throughout his every extremity, and he rolled his lower lip between his teeth to try and keep his cheek-splitting grin somewhat at bay.

~

“What was that?” Betty squeaked, her shoulders jumping up to her ears as another unidentifiable noise echoed through the room they were in.

“It’s nothing, Betts. Just the wind. Can you look back towards the window?” Jughead dismissed from behind his camera, trying to capture the way the midnight moonlight bounced off the smooth planes of Betty’s pale face, refracting off the broken glass in front of them. Betty shook herself, clearing her head of ridiculous thoughts while trying to ignore the tiny prickles dancing their way up the back of her neck, and did as she was asked.

“You know whenever the guy in the movie says it’s just the wind, it’s never just the wind,” Betty retorted dryly, barely moving her lips as she tilted her head, guided by Jughead’s gentle touch. He brushed his thumb along her lower lip as he pulled away, delighting in the way her eyes darkened to a slightly deeper shade of green.

“Don’t worry, baby. If the big, spooky ghosts come for us, _I’ll protect you_ ,” Jughead whispered dramatically, one corner of his mouth lifting cheekily, dropping his hold on his camera to take a step closer.

“I won’t hold my breath,” Betty whispered, trying and failing to hide that she no longer had any breath left – not after the way his lips looked wrapping around the word ‘baby’, the way he was crowding her against the battered desk behind them.

One of Jughead’s hands came up to cradle her face as his lips covered hers, pressing the length of their bodies together with the other hand at the small of her back. Betty could feel the pad of his thumb rubbing slowly back and forth there, grazing the swell of her ass briefly with every swipe. She let out a soft whimper as his tongue ran along the seam of her lips, dipping in to taste the inside of her mouth, his hip bucking into hers at the noise. The scrape of the desk across the floor as they forced it backwards got lost in the thudding bass of the party music filtering throughout the building, vibrating up through their bodies and keeping time with their rapidly increasing heartrates.

“It’s also… the couple… making out… that gets killed… early on,” Betty spoke against his lips between kisses, trying to calm her heaving chest as Jughead began to roam further south, mouthing at the edge of her jaw, the underside of her chin, the slope of her throat. His amused laugh rumbled in his chest, fuelling the growing heat beginning between her thighs.

“As much as the fact that you’ve been watching so many horror movies lately is working as a turn on right now,” he breathed with a pointed press of his hips into hers. “Talking about our impending death is not,” he finished, digging his teeth into her lower lip.

“Oh, but I thought it would be your kind of thing,” Betty giggled, sliding her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and pulling just hard enough to elicit a grunt. He lowered his head back to hers, his fingers wandering beneath the fabric of her sweater.

“Hey, Bughead! The queen requires your presence,” Kevin’s voice drifted into the room about the raucous. Jughead groaned, dropping his head to Betty’s shoulder as she continued to run her fingers carefully through his dark waves, making him shudder.

“Now?” Jughead shouted back, feeling Betty’s shoulders shake with quiet laughter. He pinched at her hip, enjoying the squeal that burst from her lips.

“Now, or on your head be it,” Kevin replied, poking his head around the doorway. “She’s brought a Ouija board!” he screeched, disappearing as quickly as he arrived. Jughead rolled his eyes.

“Cheryl Blossom _and_ ghosts in the same room – I’m not sure anyone should be subjected to that,” he grumbled, locking his arms around Betty’s waist.

“Don’t worry, _baby_. I’ll protect you,” Betty mimicked, shrieking as he chased her out of the room.

~

“Alright, cretins. If anybody so much as slides this glass an inch, even by accident, I will rain hell upon them, got it?” Cheryl told everybody steadily as they gathered in a circle, each resting a finger on the planchette.

An apprehensive hush fell across the group, and even Jughead felt a slight buzzing starting beneath his skin, and not just as a side effect of sitting so close to Kevin who was practically vibrating on his other side.

“Spirits,” Cheryl spoke into the air, closing her eyes so her thick lashes rest daintily on her high cheeks. “Are you with us?” It was as if everybody simultaneously stopped breathing as they waited for a reply. Jughead was just about to scoff his disbelief in the afterlife when Archie spoke up from across the circle.

“Why isn’t anything happening?” he frowned, furrowing his eyebrows at the little wooden object as if he were trying to move it with his mind.

“Hush, Archiekins,” Cheryl chastised, earning herself an icy glare from Veronica. “Give them time.” They waited some more.

“Look nothing is going to–” Jughead’s sigh was cut off by the sharp slide of wood across wood as the planchette shot over to the word ‘yes’.

“Holy shit!” Reggie yelled, pulling his finger back quickly, replacing it when Cheryl fixed him with an unimpressed stare.  

“Did that seriously just happen? Nobody is fucking with us, right?” Moose asked nervously, glancing at everybody in the circle pointedly. There was a murmured denial of any tampering.

“Shut up!” Cheryl demanded, shifting in her seat, looking ever the summoner of the dead with her dark red lips and spider brooch glinting in the low light. “Spirit, can you tell us your name?”

Another beat passed in which Jughead was ready to chalk the whole thing up to their collective imaginations – even if he knew such a thing was pretty much impossible, but he wasn’t willing to dismiss the theory that they were being slowly pulled under the influence of some age old toxic fumes that lingered inside the building – when there was movement under their hands once more.

“C. O. O. P. E. R,” they chanted, spelling out the message. Betty’s blood ran cold as multiple pairs of eyes turned to her all at once.

“Me?” she squeaked, locking eyes with Jughead.

“Betty Cooper,” Cheryl crooned. “Well, if anyone was going to have any crazy skeletons in their proverbial closet of course it would be your family.”

Betty narrowed her eyes. “Cheryl, our families are related. Technically it’s your crazy, too,” she shot back, preening at Jughead’s chuckle as the smirk dropped quickly from Cheryl’s face.

“Ancestor Cooper, do you have a message for us?” Cheryl bit out in lieu of a reply, straightening her shoulders. The planchette quivered.

“D. E. A. T. H.”

“Well, that’s not good,” Archie piped up, not looking up to see Jughead’s withering look.

“Who?” Kevin asked eagerly before anyone else could, balancing on the edge of his seat. “Who’s gonna die?!”

“E. V. E. R. Y. O…”

As the group continued to spell out the fatal message, Jughead’s gaze narrowed in on the opposite side of the table, his anger flaring.

Chuck’s composure was cracking, a laugh threatening to break his almost-straight face as he unquestionably pushed the planchette across the board. Jughead bristled, furious that he’d bring Betty into his games, shooting out his foot and delivering one swift kick to Chuck’s shin beneath the table.

“Son of a bitch!” Chuck yelled, pulling his hand back to cradle his injured leg, his retreat coinciding with the stilling of the spelling on the board. “What the hell, Jones?!”

“I believe we’ve found out _ghost_ ,” Jughead deadpanned, leaning back in his chair and draping an arm protectively around Betty’s shoulders. Veronica whacked Chuck’s chest with the back of her hand.

“Not cool, man,” Reggie breathed, some of the colour finally beginning to return to his face.

“I can’t believe it was fake,” Kevin pouted, slumping in his seat while Moose cast him an incredulous look.

“Tut tut, Chuckles,” Cheryl sang, and for the first time that night Chuck began to look afraid. “You didn’t play by the rules…” she trailed off. As much as his curiosity was piqued, Jughead didn’t stuck around to hear what kind of repercussions Chuck was going to have to face at the hands of Cheryl Blossom. He pulled Betty up with him.

“Looks like I came to your rescue after all,” Jughead murmured into her ear as he tucked her close against his side. Betty shoved at his chest, quickly pulling him back to her after he stumbled.

“Never doubted you, Jones.”


End file.
